


Golden Hour

by olligane



Series: The Silver Sails [2]
Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Gen, minor mentions of abusive behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:21:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27994434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olligane/pseuds/olligane
Summary: Léon L’Étoile picks up a hitchhiker, and she's kinda a dick about it.a collection of paragraphs about Léon's time as Dr. Carmilla's only child.
Series: The Silver Sails [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2046695
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5





	Golden Hour

**Author's Note:**

> Contains hair pulling to intentionally cause harm and condescending language. I have also yet to correctly pin down Dr. Carmilla's personality.

Choking. He was choking. Lungs burning and yearning for delicious and sweet air, his diaphragm spasming, his brain filling with static as oxygen failed to reach it. He clawed at his throat as he fell to the floor and blacked out. Léon died for the first time that day, and though he knew she had killed him, he was very sure she had a good reason to suck all the air out of the bridge  
When he had awoken she had been staring at him. Why would she be staring at him? He wanted to sit up, so he did and immediately regretted his choice. She had slammed him back onto the metal observation table, winding him for the second time since he met her. She was strong for a woman of remarkably insignificant weight, and the lack of leverage from her sitting stature was working against her, but she was able to push him around.   
“How do they feel,” she asked in an almost mocking tone.  
“How do what feel” he coughed out politely, trying not to freak out and squirm.  
“The lungs,” is all she would say while he sat almost as a slab of meat.

She had marveled at him for days after he woke up as if this was her first time successfully ruining lives like this, but she soon stopped and finally let him out of the lab.   
The Petit Lapin stayed orderly as he had left it, thankfully. His hands still able to run his hands over the wood patterned metal siding, his heels still able to clunk against the metal of the floor.   
The ship settled. He ate breakfast alone in the “morning” and dinner at “night”. He read in his library in bliss as she did god knows what in that forsaken Laboratory. He had his first good night's sleep since he had left home.   
He had taken to using a cart from cargo to move around the long hallways, quieting around the doors to the Lab as to avoid making her mad.   
His thoughts were fleeting, choosing instead to replace his fear with words that were not his own. Fantasy and Fact worked well in battling his aching and shrill panicked thoughts about what she had and will do to him.  
Occasionally, he heard her in the halls, never during the ship's day cycle. She murmured a lot, talking to herself. He could never truly make out what she was going on about.

Eventually, the Doctor started tracking down Léon. At the first sign of resistance, she would yank on his long hair, pulling him to her to repeat her sentiment with an angry intonation. She reminded him of his mother. So he stayed complacent out of fear.  
Her orders started as little things, “grab me a snack” or “a book on the system, now”- and grew into “plot a course for ___” or “replace the manifold, it’s leaking”. He was not qualified to do such things. He was a man of books and learning, but he was far from skilled with his hands. Clumsy in all ways but turning the pages in a book. He had done his best every time, accepting it with a “yes, Captain” or a “right away, Captain”. And it soon became obvious that she was looking for new crewmates. He would not mind company aboard the old ship, he just promised himself that anyone who joined them would not suffer by his hand. 

She forced a flute into his hands, along with a book of sheet music that had been penned in a neat and steady hand.   
“My last Archivist played the flute so we’ll start there.”  
“Flute?”  
“Yes, play a note.”  
“I, uh, don't know how to play the flute?”  
“Play. A. Note.”  
He nervously placed the mouth of the flute up to his lips, and she adjusted his positioning to correct it. His attempts to make a note were pathetic, and every note he had made was sour and shook his spine. Eventually, she had given up on a pretty note in the silver tube, so she shifted to a recorder and swapped them out forcefully.   
“You’re not very good at the Flute, are you? Not very skilled in general I guess. Lets try the recorder- even a child can play the recorder. Try a note.”  
This time it sounded much better when he forced air through the tube, but she would always think he needed work. From now on, he would learn to play the instruments a mysterious Ivy played.

“Léon, set a course for Brudza 7.”  
He hesitated “Brudza 7 is completely covered in water, is it not?”  
She glared at him for a second before reaching for his hair and pulling him down to her level, looking at the hologram of a planet that was no doubt covered in nothing but liquid. “I’ve never had a pet fish before,” she hissed out before she threw him against the grating of the lab floor. She turned to enter the storage room. Léon ran his hands through his hair, bunching up the long bits as he preemptively apologized to whoever Doctor Carmilla got her hands on next.


End file.
